Auburn city manager resigns

After a little over a year on the job, Auburn City Manager Patricia Rayl has abruptly resigned. Rayl made the surprise announcement at a recent special Auburn City Commission meeting.

The move means the city goes back to the drawing board to find a replacement for Rayl, who had been hired by the city commission from a field of 33 candidates to succeed the retired Jo Ella Krantz. Rayl’s resignation is effective immediately, officials said.

“The meeting started with her resignation and then adjourned,” said Commissioner Russell Williams, noting he is stunned by the recent turn of events at Auburn City Hall. “It’s very sad to see Pattie go.”

Auburn Mayor Lee Kilbourn said the move, though sudden, is understandable given the toll commuting was taking on her family life.

“She did too much traveling between Auburn and her home and husband in Jackson,” he said. “She wanted to be with family during the holidays.”

Williams relayed a different version of Rayl’s departure. He said she “panicked” after receiving complaints from residents after the city’s leaf vacuum failed mechanically and purchased a new machine for $11,000 without board approval. Kilbourn expressed his displeasure with this policy violation and several aspects of her job performance in an email to commissioners that was copied to Rayl, Williams said.

“Policies limit spending to $2,500 or in an emergency of $5,000 without board approval,” Williams said. “Pattie panicked following the residents’ complaints and did what she felt was necessary to provide a service to the residents. She always acted with the best intentions, in my opinion. The violation was a judgment error, obviously.”

Before the second leaf machine was delivered, Auburn’s current one was repaired and returned to service. Williams said the second machine could not be returned.

Williams thinks the situation should have been handled differently, and if it had “we may not have been pushed into the current position of no administrator.” He said the board should have dealt with the purchasing violation alone and then addressed other job-related concerns in an administrator evaluation.

“I personally feel that if the board dealt with the violation alone we may have come up with some type of disciplinary action,” Williams said.

He said Kilbourn was a bit heavy-handed.

“I felt the mayor piled on several concerns in addition to the purchasing violation,” he said. “These should have been separate issues but the mayor rolled it all into one. It is his administration and I respect that action although I may not agree.”

Given a chance to respond to Williams’ assertions, Kilbourn acknowledged that he had lost confidence in Rayl.

“Yes, I had concerns and I expressed them,” he said. “I felt we needed a change and now was the time to do it for the betterment of Auburn.”

Kilbourn said he prefers to keep certain sensitive matters under wraps whenever possible.

“Unless the law requires it, there is a place to know and a place not to know and I pray for the wisdom to know accordingly,” he said. “Russ and I have had this discussion a number of times.”

Kilbourn added that Rayl was new to this type of work and he wishes her much success in her future endeavors.

The Daily News could not immediately reach Rayl for comment.

Rayl accepted the Auburn leadership post after serving as director of the Village of Blissfield Downtown Development Authority and manager of its Main Street Program. During her short stint in Auburn, Rayl fired longtime clerk/treasurer Karen Bellor, a decision that the Auburn City Commission upheld by a 6-1 vote last March.

“We wish Pattie the best,” Kilbourn said, adding the city will begin a search process for her successor in December.

The tentative timeline, Kilbourn said, is for job applications to be in by the end of January, interviews to begin in February and a top candidate selected following final interviews in late March.

Rayl began working for the city in September of 2015 and brought with her a reputation as an effective communicator, officials said.

“I want to keep improving Auburn’s transparency and responsiveness to our residents,” she told the Daily News in November of 2015.

Like Kilbourn, Commissioner Matt Charbonneau said it was an amicable parting of ways but acknowledged there were concerns about Rayl in her new role.

“There is no bad blood between the city and her,” he said. “We all wished her the best and left with things on good terms. I haven’t sat down with Pattie to discuss why she resigned but I’m sure I’ll get the opportunity.”

Charbonneau said Rayl brought some good qualities to Auburn but questioned whether she was comfortable in a role that reports to a seven-member commission and manages a $2.5 million budget.

“From my point of view and based on other concerns that were raised, it seems that over time the fit for both parties wasn’t there,” he said. “In the end I think she started to feel uncomfortable with the position and that’s why she offered her resignation. Now we are back to square one on finding another administrator, which I can see us doing in-house since we have the experience working with the Michigan Municipal League on this process.”